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BANGALORE: Wipro has won a large technology outsourcing contract, potentially valued at close to $ 500 million (Rs 2,900 crore) from Citigroup, according to people familiar with the development.

The large contract comes at a time when such multi-hundred-million dollar technology contracts have become few and far between. Large corporations in the United States and Europe have been cautious on technology spending and following a practice of breaking up outsourced contracts into smaller projects, which are given out to multiple service providers.

"Wipro does not comment on market speculation," a spkokesman said.

Shares of Wipro were up 0.57% to Rs 343 on BSE. As many as 6.32 lakh shares of Wipro exchanged hands on Wednesday compared to its average two-week trading volume of 1.86 lakh shares.

The multinational bank is a large outsourcer to India and works with a number of Indian software service providers. It is a top client for Tata Consultancy Services and also sends work to Cognizant and Wipro.

The last large contract Wipro won from Citigroup was in 2008, when it acquired Citi Technology Services for $ 127 million. As part of that transaction, the Bangalore-based company had got committed business worth at least $ 480 million over a six-year-period.

A Mumbai-based analyst said that this could be one of the two mega-contracts that Wipro was chasing, one of which was 'almost in the bag' at the end of March quarter.

Wipro CEO TK Kurien has been pushing for large contracts as well as higher revenues from financial services clients ever since he took charge at the helm of the company in early 2011. Despite temporary setbacks in spending by financial services firms, Kurien has maintained that Wipro was focused on increasing contribution from banks and insurers as they are the largest technology spenders.

The Indian IT industry gets around 40% of revenues from financial services clients, while for Wipro it makes up only a little over a quarter of its revenues.